Text turns a photo into a message. A price on a product shot, a headline on a blog image, a quote over a landscape, "Sold out" across a listing photo, a name and date on an event picture, a label on a before and after. Phone apps can do it, but their fonts are limited, the text often ends up blurry, and the result is saved at a reduced size.
This editor puts as many text layers as you need on a photo, each with its own font, size, color, outline, shadow, background box, opacity and angle. You drag text where you want it, and the final image is drawn at the photo's full resolution. Everything happens in your browser; the photo is not uploaded and the fonts come from this site, not from outside servers.
How to add text to a photo
- Drop a photo into the box above, click it to choose one, or paste an image with Ctrl+V. No photo? Pick a size such as Square 1080 x 1080 or YouTube thumbnail 1280 x 720, choose a color and click Start blank.
- A first text layer appears in the middle. Type your words in the Text box. Press Enter for a new line.
- Drag the text on the photo to move it. Drag the gold square at the corner of the dashed frame to make it bigger or smaller.
- Choose a Font, the Size and the Color. Use B and I for bold and italic, the align buttons for multi-line text, and Center it to put the text in the middle of the photo.
- Under Effects, add an Outline and a Shadow. Open Background box, opacity and rotation for a box behind the text, transparency, rotation and line spacing.
- Click + Add text for another line with its own style. Click a layer's name under the photo, or the text itself, to select it. Use Duplicate, Forward, Back and Delete to manage layers.
- Pick JPG, PNG or WebP and click Download photo.
Keyboard shortcuts: click the photo, then use the arrow keys to nudge the selected text one pixel at a time (ten with Shift), press Delete to remove it, and double-click to jump to its text box.
Fonts you can use
There are 33 fonts in three groups. System fonts are already on most computers and phones. The other two groups are open licence fonts (SIL Open Font License or Apache 2.0) served from this site, so they load without contacting outside font services and you may use them in commercial work.
| Group | Fonts | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Installed on most devices | Arial, Arial Bold, Georgia, Times New Roman, Verdana, Trebuchet MS, Courier New, Impact | Plain labels, prices, meme-style captions with Impact |
| Bold and display | Montserrat, Montserrat Extra Bold, Oswald, Oswald Bold, Anton, Bebas Neue, Playfair Display, Playfair Display Bold, Lobster, Pacifico, Permanent Marker, Caveat, Caveat Bold | Headlines, sale banners, thumbnails, quotes, friendly handwritten notes |
| Handwriting and script | Dancing Script, Great Vibes, Sacramento, Allura, Alex Brush, Mr Dafoe, Herr Von Muellerhoff, Homemade Apple, Cedarville Cursive, La Belle Aurore, Yellowtail, Satisfy | Invitations, wedding and event photos, signatures, elegant product names |
System fonts can look slightly different on Windows, Mac and Android because each device has its own version. The web fonts look the same everywhere. They include English and Western European letters such as é, ñ and ü; for other alphabets, choose one of the system fonts, which usually cover more languages. Emoji typed into the text box are drawn with your device's emoji font.
Making text readable on any photo
The most common problem with text on photos is contrast: white text vanishes on a bright sky, black text vanishes on a dark jacket. Each effect solves it in a different way:
| Effect | Setting to start with | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Outline | 8 to 15 percent, black around white text | Busy photos, meme captions, YouTube thumbnails |
| Shadow | 30 to 50 percent, black | Text over photos with mixed light and dark areas, a softer look than an outline |
| Background box | Black at 60 to 75 percent opacity | Long text, prices, labels, subtitles, anything that must be read quickly |
| Placement | Over a calm area such as sky, a wall or a table | Always worth trying first |
Outline and shadow sizes are relative to the text size, so they keep their proportions when you resize the text. The background box has rounded corners and padding that also scale with the text.
Text sizes that work
Text size is set as a share of the photo's shorter side, so the same setting looks similar on a 1,080 pixel square and a 4,000 pixel photo. The pixel value is shown next to the slider. Some starting points:
- Headline or thumbnail text: 10 to 16 percent. YouTube thumbnails are viewed small, so three to five big words beat a full sentence.
- Price or "Sale" badge: 8 to 12 percent, with a background box.
- Caption or credit line: 3 to 5 percent, in a corner, with a shadow.
- Quote over a photo: 5 to 8 percent, centered, with 1.2 to 1.4 line spacing.
Design tips: fonts, hierarchy and spacing
- Two fonts at most. Pair one bold display font for the main words with one plain font for details, such as Anton with Montserrat, or Playfair Display with Montserrat. More fonts look messy.
- One clear hierarchy. Make the most important words at least twice the size of the rest. Readers see the big line first, then decide whether to read the small one.
- Short lines. Break long sentences into two or three lines with Enter. Center aligned works for quotes and headlines, left aligned for lists and details.
- Breathing room. Keep text away from the photo edges, at least 5 percent of the width. Social apps may cover edges with buttons or crop them.
- Script fonts need size. Thin handwriting fonts become unreadable when small. Use them at 7 percent or more, and never for long text.
- Use color from the photo. A text color picked from the product, such as the color of a dress, ties the design together. The image color picker finds the exact hex code.
Examples
Sale banner on a product photo
Text "SUMMER SALE" in Anton, size 12 percent, white with a 10 percent black outline, near the top. A second layer "40% OFF" in Montserrat Extra Bold, size 9 percent, white on a red background box at 85 percent opacity, rotated minus 8 degrees. Save as JPG at 90.
Quote card from a blank canvas
Start blank at 1080 x 1350 in a dark color. Type the quote in Playfair Display, size 6 percent, centered, line spacing 1.3. Add a second layer with the author's name in Montserrat, size 3 percent, below it. Save as PNG for crisp text.
Event photo with a name and date
Text in Great Vibes, size 8 percent, white with a 40 percent shadow, placed over a calm area. Add a small date line in Montserrat, size 3 percent. Save as JPG.
"Sold out" or "New" stamp on a listing photo
Text "SOLD OUT" in Bebas Neue, size 14 percent, white on a black background box at 70 percent opacity, rotated minus 12 degrees across the middle of the photo. Duplicate the layer and change it to "BACK SOON" at 5 percent below it. Keep the original photo too, so you can switch back when stock returns.
Labeled before and after
Combine two photos with the collage maker, then open the collage here and add "Before" and "After" in Oswald Bold with a background box in each corner.
Text for YouTube thumbnails
Thumbnails are where text on images matters most, because they decide whether someone clicks. Start a blank canvas at 1280 x 720, or open a frame from your video, then:
- Write three to five words, not a sentence. The video title already carries the details.
- Use Anton, Bebas Neue, Oswald Bold or Impact at 14 to 20 percent size, in white or yellow.
- Add a thick black outline of 12 to 18 percent, so the text survives on a small phone screen.
- Keep the bottom right corner clear, because YouTube shows the video length there.
- Save as JPG at quality 90. As of October 2026, YouTube's help center recommends 16:9 thumbnails of 3840 x 2160 pixels (at least 640 wide) and allows files up to 2 MB from the mobile app and 50 MB from a computer. A 1280 x 720 JPG stays far below both limits and looks sharp at thumbnail size.
Using the editor on a phone
The editor works on phones and tablets. Tap the drop box to pick a photo, type in the text box, and drag the text with your finger. While your finger is on the photo, the page does not scroll, so the text stays where you put it; scroll by touching the controls area. The corner handle has a generous touch area for resizing. On small screens the controls sit below the photo, so scroll down to change fonts and effects, then scroll back up to check. The saved photo goes to your Downloads or Files app.
Saving: format and quality
The download is drawn at the full size of your photo (or the blank canvas size), not at the size of the preview, so text edges are as sharp as the image allows. JPG suits photos and is the default for JPG originals; quality 90 to 92 keeps text edges clean. PNG keeps text perfectly sharp and is the default for blank canvases and PNG originals. WebP gives small files for websites and is hidden in browsers that cannot create it, such as Safari. File names get -text added, so the original is never overwritten.
Text on photos for social media and stores
- Instagram: keep important text inside the middle of a 4:5 post, because the profile grid shows a 3:4 center crop. Crop first with the Instagram post size tool.
- Pinterest: a short headline at the top of a 2:3 pin helps it stand out in the feed.
- Marketplaces: many marketplaces restrict text and badges on the main product image. Amazon's main image rules, for example, do not allow added text or graphics, and Google Shopping images should not carry promotional overlays. Keep text for secondary images, ads and social posts.
Looking for what to post about? AM Jarvis's Viral Finder shows what is trending in your niche and turns it into post and video ideas, and the images you make here are ready for those posts.
Troubleshooting
- A font looks plain or wrong: it was still loading or could not load. Pick it again; if a message says it could not load, refresh the page.
- Bold does not change a font: fonts that are already heavy, such as Anton, have no bolder version, so the browser imitates bold. Choose a bolder font instead.
- Text is cut off at the edge: drag it inward or make it smaller. Text outside the photo is not saved.
- Some letters show in a different font: they are outside the font's character set. Use a system font for those languages.
- I cannot select a text layer: another layer is on top. Click its name in the row under the photo, or use Back on the top layer.
Privacy
The photo and your text stay in your browser. Nothing is uploaded or stored, and the saved image does not include camera data such as GPS location. For protecting photos with a brand mark on many images at once, use the watermark maker.